Unsung Podcast

Are Cabaret Voltaire Britain's Most Pioneering Electronic Act? (Side A) with P6 from Stretchheads, Desalvo and OMO

Cabaret Voltaire are no one thing. Depending on which corner of the internet you found us from, you might know them as the caustic Sheffield noise act who preceded post-punk, the sinister electro-industrial outfit with a penchant for evangelical samples and anti-fascist agitprop, or the dancefloor-adjacent act who fetched up on Factory's Belgian satellite label and made something close to club music. You're all correct. This week, we have a guide. Phil Eaglesham — P6, former front person of Stretchheads and De Salvo, current singer in OMO, musical walking tour operator, man of broad and alarming musical learnings — is here to help us navigate one of the most complex and wilfully uncommercial bands to come out of the UK, via their transitional compilation Eight Crepuscule Tracks . We trace the band's origins in a Sheffield attic in 1973, chart their debts to dub, Black American music, and the sci-fi soundscapes that shaped a generation of working-class ears, and make the case that Cabaret Voltaire — despite their apparent difficulty — were one of the most industrious and fundamentally political bands of their era. We also get into their time at Western Works Studio, which functioned less like a recording facility and more like the gravitational centre of an entire Sheffield scene; their complicated relationship with Rough Trade; and their connections to Joy Division, Lydia Lunch, Clock DVA, and the bands that would become the Human League and ABC. Along the way, Phil brings original artefacts including a signed 1979 TG/Cab Vol/Rema Rema poster from Tottenham Court Road, and the original 12-inches the album is built from. We also ask what would have happened to Cabaret Voltaire without punk — and conclude they'd likely have ended up an academic footnote rather than a foundational text. Highlights: 00:00 Intro 03:56 Meet Phil Eaglesham 07:47 P6 — The Name and the Character 09:29 Queer Identity in the Industrial Scene 12:55 Pseudonyms and Rockism 17:44 Cabaret Voltaire: The Basics 22:32 Sheffield, Western Works, and the Scene 25:18 Rough Trade, The Fall, and Being Prolific 29:10 Working-Class Roots and Industrial Culture 32:33 Sci-Fi Soundscapes and Electronic Prehistory 35:11 Musique Concrète to Cab Vol: How Close Were They? 36:13 Dadaism, Situationism, and Confrontational Art 38:40 Punk's Effect on Audiences (Not Just Music) 40:11 The Counterfactual: Cab Vol Without Punk 41:43 Black Music, Funk, and the DNA Nobody Talks About 43:39 New Wave, No Wave, and New York Connections 46:29 Factory Records, Crépuscule, and the Belgian Connection 47:49 Original Artefacts: Posters, 12-Inches, and History 50:31 Why Eight Crepuscule Tracks ? 52:54 Looking Towards Next Week and Outro

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